DOCUMENT PROCESSING APPARATUS AND METHOD

• US 20060288278A1
• Filed: 05/25/2006
• Published: 12/21/2006
• Est. Priority Date: 06/17/2005
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Ricoh Company Limited
• Original Assignee: Ricoh Company Limited
• Inventors: KOBAYASHI, KOJI
• Granted Patent: US 8,001,466 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 715/209
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/106 Display of layout of documents; Previewing
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/143 Markup, e.g. Standard Generalized Markup Language [SGML] or Document Type Definition [DTD]
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/154 Tree transformation for tree-structured or markup documents, e.g. XSLT, XSL-FO or stylesheets

Abstract

A document processing apparatus includes a layout analysis unit which extracts document elements by analyzing data of a document, determines relationship between the document elements, extracts a group of mutually related document elements as an object and an independent document element as an object, and generates structure information defining one or more of said objects in the document; and a structure converting unit which converts the structure information generated by the layout analysis unit into display information for display in a display mode.

Claims

1. A document processing apparatus comprising:

a layout analysis unit which extracts document elements by analyzing data of a document, determines relationship between the document elements, extracts a group of mutually related document elements as an object and an independent document element as an object, and generates structure information defining one or more of said objects in the document; and

a structure converting unit which converts the structure information generated by the layout analysis unit into display information for display in a display mode.

2. The document processing apparatus as claimed in claim 1, wherein the structure information includes attributes of the objects.

3. The document processing apparatus as claimed in claim 1, wherein the structure information includes reading order of the objects.

4. The document processing apparatus as claimed in claim 3, wherein the display information is configured to display the objects in the document one by one according to the reading order of the objects.

5. The document processing apparatus as claimed in claim 1, further comprising:

an object extracting unit which extracts, from the document, actual data of the objects extracted by the layout analysis unit.

6. The document processing apparatus as claimed in claim 1, wherein the layout analysis unit determines whether there is a relationship between document elements based on conditions including size relationship, distance relationship, and positional relationship between the document elements.

7. The document processing apparatus as claimed in claim 1, wherein the layout analysis unit selects a document element largest in size as a base element from one or more document elements that have not been extracted as objects;

and determines a size relationship and a distance relationship between the base element and another element around the base element based on a threshold size and a threshold distance which are determined based on the size of the base element.

8. The document processing apparatus as claimed in claim 1, wherein the display information is configured so that one or more of the objects in the document are displayed in a layout having a size relatively smaller than the size of the document and a selected object in the layout is displayed as a size relatively larger than the size of the object in the layout.

9. The document processing apparatus as claimed in claim 1, wherein the layout analysis unit determines relationship between the objects and extracts each group of mutually related objects as a single superior object and each independent object as a single superior object;

and stores hierarchical structure of the superior objects and the objects therein in the structure information.

10. The document processing apparatus as claimed in claim 9, wherein the layout analysis unit limits maximum number of objects with heading attribute in a superior object to one.

11. The document processing apparatus as claimed in claim 9, wherein changing layout of objects across superior objects is prohibited in the structure conversion by the structure converting unit.

16. An information recording medium having a program embodied therein for causing a computer to function as the units in the document processing apparatus as claimed in claim 1.

17. An information recording medium having a program embodied therein for causing a computer to function as the object extracting unit in the document processing apparatus as claimed in claim 5.

12. A document processing method comprising:

a layout analysis step of extracting document elements by analyzing data of a document, determining relationship between the document elements, extracting a group of mutually related document elements as an object and an independent document element as an object, and generating structure information defining one or more of said objects in the document; and

a structure converting step of converting the structure information generated by the layout analysis unit into display information for display in a display mode.

13. The document processing method as claimed in claim 12, wherein the structure information includes attributes of the objects.

14. The document processing method as claimed in claim 12, wherein the structure information includes reading order of the objects.

15. The document processing method as claimed in claim 12, wherein the layout analysis step determines whether there is a relationship between document elements based on conditions including size relationship, distance relationship, and positional relationship between the document elements.